Promises and Rainbows

In his sermon, “The Hope of Noah,” Sinclair Ferguson explains the covenantal and redemptive nature of the bow in the sky:

As with all of God's covenants in the Bible ... He always adds physical signs to them to reassure us. Yes, His word is enough - His word is His bond - but we are doubters; and so He gives us visible signs that say to us, "I really meant what I said; look at the sign!" And here he says to Noah, "I'm going to give you a sign - the bow in the cloud."

And, of course, we know what that is, the bow - the multicolored rainbow - but actually the word used in the book of Genesis is not rainbow, it's warbow - the bow of war, the bow of battle. It is a picture of God, after hostility has ended and He has established His new creation, flinging His bow of war, His bow of judgment, into the skies as a reassurance to Noah, 'Now, that there is reconciliation, you may enjoy the peace that you have with Me; you can be sure that there will never again be this kind of judgment on the earth, until, of course, the cosmic final judgment of all at the end of time;' and so Noah, begins to enjoy the fruit and the spoils of war.

Some have even suggested, over the centuries - if you think about the rainbow as God's military bow transformed into an ornament of great beauty, that hostility has ceased and that there is no arrow in the bow - that, if He has thrown the bow into the sky that way, the only place the arrow could have gone was into His own heart.'

I wonder if Noah ever could have pondered, 'If God has thrown His bow into the sky, where is His arrow, and why does it point thus heavenward into His heart?' And, of course, the rest of the story of the Bible will pick up on that idea - it's only as God takes the judgment to Himself, into His Son Jesus Christ, that we might enjoy full and final reconciliation with Him.1

The rainbow, we know, was appointed of God as a token of his gracious covenant with mankind. God is encompassed with a rainbow, which signifies that as he sits, and reigns, and manifests himself in his church, he appears as encompassed with mercy, as of old the throne of God in the holy of holies, where God manifested himself in the church of Israel, was called the mercy seat. So here there is a rainbow, the sign of God’s gracious covenant, round about the throne that he sits on.

This rainbow was “in sight like unto an emerald,” which is a precious stone of an exceeding lovely green color, so green that this color appears in nothing else so lively and lovely. This color is a most fit emblem of divine grace; it is a very lively color, not so dull as blue or purple, and yet most easy to the sight, more easy than the more fiery colors of yellow and red.

It is the color of all the grass, herbs, and trees, and growth of the earth, and therefore fitly denotes life, flourishing, prosperity, and happiness, which are often in Scripture compared to the green and flourishing growth of the earth. As the benign influence of the sun on the face of the earth is shown by this color above all others, so is the grace, and benign influence, and communication of God fitly represented by this color. This color is the color of joy and gladness.

The fields are said to shout for joy, and also to sing, by their appearing in a cheerful green. As the color red is made use of to signify God’s revenging justice, in Zech. 1:8 and elsewhere, so is green the emblem of divine grace. As observed, this doesn’t imply that the rainbow had no other color, “but that the proportion of green was greater than ordinary.”2